


icarus crawls out of the sea

by desmondkilometers (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Assassin's Creed III, Deny Desmond's Death Day, Desmond Miles Lives, Desmond Miles Needs a Hug, Desmond's Isu Heritage, Gen, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, Isu Technology (Assassin's Creed), M/M, Medical Procedures, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Post-Assassin's Creed III, Queer Themes, Slow Burn, Tags Subject to Change, Trans Character, Trans Desmond Miles, Trans Male Character, Trans Shaun Hastings, a bit heavy on the medical stuff actually, archive warnings and ratings are Not changing tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/desmondkilometers
Summary: Desmond lives.This complicates things somewhat.
Relationships: Desmond Miles & William Miles, Rebecca Crane & Desmond Miles, Rebecca Crane & Shaun Hastings, Rebecca Crane & Shaun Hastings & Desmond Miles, Shaun Hastings & Desmond Miles, Shaun Hastings/Desmond Miles
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yes i know i'm late but in my defense i have had this in my google docs with multiple finished chapters since august and college applications have also been kicking my ass since august
> 
> will i ever finish this? god i sure hope so 
> 
> i have Plans :]
> 
> title is from [wisdom teeth by keaton st james](https://boykeats.tumblr.com/post/146091438897/wisdom-teeth-by-keaton-st-james)

It doesn't start with anything particular. It doesn't start at any particular  _ moment _ . It's one of those things that changes subtly, day by day, and then a week or a month or a year later, you look back and you wonder when your attention lapsed enough not to notice such a shift.

There are things he notices, though. Like when he falls asleep in front of his computer in the warehouse, headphones still looping the same music - Relaxing Forest and Stream Sounds 6 Hours Sleep - and jolts awake a lot more than six hours later to find his empty teacups gone and a familiar white hoodie draped over his shoulders. He doesn't realize what it is, or what this means, or even that he's  _ awake  _ at first, so he just shrugs it closer to him, and yawns a little, and absentmindedly ponders the way that cheap romance novels - not that he reads those or anything - always wax poetic about the way people smell, but this doesn't really smell like anything he can put a finger on. It's familiar nonetheless, and oddly comforting, and he falls back asleep easily. 

The hoodie is gone by the time he actually wakes up, at dawn the next morning, to start his work. A promise taken back.

He forgets about it, like a dream, only the vague feeling of warmth - and is that softness? - remaining, and like a dream, he jolts as he recalls vivid images later that day, when Desmond’s arm brushes his own and that same unnameable scent wafts into his nostrils for a split second.

* * *

One day, Desmond is in the Animus - Monteriggioni - and Shaun is the only one watching it, so he strikes up something between banter and conversation with Desmond. He makes an offhand comment about some highly specific thing that he’d mentioned in one of the lengthier database entries - in his defense, as the wielder of a history degree and all the habits that have come with it, they’re watered down in length  _ and _ content. To his surprise, Desmond replies with understanding, and then a reference to a  _ different _ entry, and then he asks if the connection cut out, because why isn’t Shaun responding?

Shaun falters, and admits the truth: “I didn’t think you actually read those.”

Desmond laughs in response, and he wishes he could hear that for real, not just through what’s essentially livestreamed memories, because Desmond isn’t out of the Animus ( _ and _ not Bleeding) quite often enough for that to be a common occurrence. 

“I read all of them, Shaun!” he says, sounding quite amused, and Shaun is glad nobody else is around to see the heat rising in his cheeks and the traitorous smile pulling at his face.

“I used to just read the ones I thought were essential - ” he sounds a bit abashed, at this, and Shaun can practically see Desmond, in his mind’s eye, scratching the back of his neck, lopsided smile, eyebrows furrowed “ - but they’re actually pretty funny and, I guess, not as dry and academic as I’d expected. So now I read them all. It’s nice to remember that I’m seeing all this through the lens of the future, and this isn’t actually the reality I live in.”

Shaun assumes  _ this _ refers to the memories Desmond is currently experiencing, which is just a tad painful to think about, but it makes sense nonetheless. Desmond....well - Shaun decides, now, that he deserves a little bit of sincerity, having given some of his own. 

“I’m glad you appreciate them,” he says, once again ever grateful that the girls aren’t here, or they’d never let him hear the end of it. “I watered them down specifically so you could read them.”

“You calling me stupid?” Desmond jokes, and Shaun actually laughs a little, barely manages to stifle it before he makes a fool of himself (even if he doesn’t really know  _ how _ he would do so, just feels embarrassed). 

“I’m calling history majors verbose and dry,” he replies, and now it’s Desmond’s turn to laugh again.

They go back to work, after that little exchange, but the thought stays with Shaun for a while, that he should make Desmond laugh more often, when he’s actively in the same time and place as Shaun, and not just a body in the chair across the room.

* * *

Shaun suggests, once, that he’d like to turn the dial all the way back on the Animus, when this is all over - no, not just two thousand years, or even ten - no,  _ all _ the way back, to the beginning of civilization, if he can. He craves that knowledge, even a shred, just a little bit, with every fiber of his being - and he doesn’t even specialize in anthropology! He can already think of half a dozen people, Assassins and regular academics alike, who’d love to get their hands on firsthand information about prehistoric times, though, can already visualize how he’d start the emails. 

He doesn’t expect Desmond to take it seriously, to  _ agree _ ; hell, he isn’t really taking it seriously  _ himself _ , but a jolt of surprise stops him in his tracks as Desmond doesn’t even flinch, just agrees -  _ he agrees _ \- that it’s a great idea and he’d totally be down to try it out.

And of course, there’s the whole unspoken bit about  _ when this is all over _ , the same thing that Rebecca had suggested, about a  _ real _ vacation, and Shaun is thinking about what this implies. That when the fate of the world isn’t hanging over their heads by a single thread, Desmond and Shaun will still be connected. That Desmond will still keep him company - will still  _ want _ to do so. That maybe he can get to know Desmond, for real, not feeling like he’s rushing through everything.

Shaun files away the idea on a sticky note, and then on one bullet point (with subdivisions, of course) of many in an encrypted document on his computer. Things we’re going to do After, capital-A  _ After _ , because it’s important enough to warrant such a designation, grammar be damned. 

* * *

Desmond keeps  _ giving _ , is what he’s doing. It took a while, until they’d made it to the Temple, but Shaun has figured it out. He’s given his life, his sanity, his body and mind - not all of it by free will, of course, but (and here, Shaun tastes something bitter on his tongue, swears it’s just the residue of his morning tea, even though he knows it isn’t) what does that matter in the grand scheme of things? 

William, Vidic, Lucy - hell, even Rebecca and Shaun. Desmond gives and gives, and the universe takes and takes, and he  _ must _ feel like he’s never getting anything in return. If anyone had brought this up to Shaun a month ago, he would have insisted that he doesn’t care  _ that _ much about Desmond, not beyond simply making sure he’s not going insane and even that’s a stretch, because he  _ said _ he wasn’t going to get attached after what happened to Clay, he  _ agreed _ with  _ himself _ and the  _ team _ that he was  _ not _ going to treat Subject 17 as anything but a colleague. 

And yet he cares. And yet he is no longer bitter about what he had perceived as selfishness, apathy,  _ aloofness _ from Desmond - he realizes that his perceptions had been false. And yet - this makes him clench his jaw and dig his nails into his palms and furrow his brows as he sits at his workstation or lies in his sleeping bag - he’s  _ attached _ . 

Stupid, stupid humanity. Making him feel  _ emotions _ , making him inclined to act on them, making him do what comes  _ naturally _ even if he tries his bloody hardest to keep up that good old facade. Load of bollocks, the whole  _ sympathy _ thing is, sometimes he thinks he’d be so much better off just pushing Desmond away like he did at the start, but then again, that never worked very well to begin with. Tenacious. Desmond is tenacious.  _ Emotions _ are tenacious. 

And, well, Shaun has to admit, even if he knows somewhere deep down that this can’t possibly end well, he still feels quite fine and good and peachy dandy  _ whatever the hell you want to call it, he feels  _ good _ , okay? _

He - 

He is admirably educated, and yet he can’t think of a better word to describe the feeling than  _ good _ . Simple as that. 

He feels  _ good _ when Desmond smiles, or laughs, or makes those silly little jokes that only make sense half the time, or just continues to  _ give _ and be _ kind _ even though his middle name might as well be cynical and Shaun can see the bags under his eyes growing darker and deeper every day. 

* * *

In the end, Shaun is only human, really, and he has to accept that. He has to step back and tell himself that he is prone to certain things, he has certain  _ tendencies _ that are coded into his DNA, hardwired into his very being. He’s been holding back, to no avail, and they’re running out of time, so he might as well just throw himself in the deep end. 

When it comes down to it, it’s easier than he thought it would be - yes, of  _ course _ he thought about it, because he is many things, but needlessly impulsive is not one of them,  _ looking at you, Desmond and Rebecca. _

It’s simple. 

He just finds Desmond, one of the rare times the man isn’t in the Animus, because he’s locked in there more and more every day, as they get closer and closer to the key, to the end of it all. They’re alone, he makes sure of it, Rebecca won’t let him hear the end of it if she catches wind, and he’s completely fucked (as Desmond is so fond of saying) if William is around. 

Just  _ existing _ alongside Desmond, when they have the time to do so (less and less these days) has become something he is used to. Desmond values his breaks, his time to think and rest and recover and just be himself - whatever is left of him to  _ be _ , that is - so Shaun doesn’t want to intrude, but he pokes his head around a corner and into the little nook Desmond has found, and Desmond smiles and waves, so Shaun takes that as an invitation to come sit down next to him. 

They sit in silence for a while, and then Shaun dives in headfirst. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, and Desmond replies with a quiet “Yikes,” which makes him snort, and that makes  _ Desmond _ laugh a little, and he thinks they might be alright. If not forever, at least now, and isn’t that all that really matters?

“Yeah?” Desmond inquires after a moment, during which Shaun has gone and wandered off into his thoughts again.

“Yeah. I’m, ah, thinking that we keep running, never looking back and all that, and what with vacation or trying new things with the Animus or even just living our lives like normal people, we keep saying we’re going to do everything after.  _ After  _ this,  _ after _ that. And we haven’t once stopped to live in the moment.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to say that,” Desmond replies, “since you’re always on about how important our work is. Then again, you’ve been sort of laid back about it recently.”

_ Since William decided to be even worse _ , Shaun thinks, silently filling in the gaps in that sentence.

He shrugs. “I still know how important is, but you shouldn’t be sacrificing literally everything at the risk of breaking your mind. You don’t deserve that.”

And oh, he hit a sore spot there, didn’t he, because Desmond sort of looks down and off the nearest cliff, staring down into the abyss, expression obscured by shadows. He almost seems as if he’s thinking that there might not  _ be _ an after.

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening anyways. I’m still Bleeding. However this ends, I don’t expect to come out of it unbroken.”

“Yeah. I know.” He always has, from the start - it’s why he tried not to get attached, at first. Shaun holds no such fantasies that, if Desmond even comes out of this alive, it’ll all be said and done with that. The road to recovery, whatever that might entail, will be long and harsh.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I care about you. Quite a bit, in fact. More than I thought I ever would or even  _ could _ . And whatever happens, you can count on me being by your side to the bitter end. I also...don’t necessarily want this to end.”

Desmond looks up again, and at him, questioningly.

“I mean, I want the whole breaking-Desmond’s-mind-and-running-from-Templars thing to end, obviously, but not...this.” He gestures vaguely at the two of them. “Our…”

Shaun pauses.

“ _ Us _ ,” he says, with certainty. Perhaps more than he should have, but it’s too late now.

“Me neither,” Desmond admits, half-smiling now, the side of his lip with the scar tugging upward in a bent - not broken, not quite - sort of way. He’s barely holding it together, isn’t he?

“Now, I know you’re a bloody moron, impulsive and all that, and you said it yourself that you don’t expect this hunt to end well, so I might as well say it now, in case I- ”

_ In case I never get the chance. _

He stops, tongue heavy in his mouth, as Desmond suddenly grabs one of his hands, holds it in both of his own, gently - almost subconsciously - rubs his thumbs in circles over Shaun’s suddenly very sweaty palm.

“No, Shaun,” he says, carefully, walking a tightrope with his voice, toeing the edge of a cliff with those infuriatingly  _ earnest _ eyes. 

“Just tell me if you - ” 

_ If you don’t feel the same way _ .

He can’t finish the sentence. Can’t get it out. Mighty Shaun Hastings, who didn’t flinch presenting a dozen wild theories or reporting a dozen heartbreaking deaths, who prides himself on his ability to stand strong and not back down, and he’s stopped right in his tracks by something as simple as a little  _ attraction. _

(Although, calling what he’s feeling  _ little _ or just an  _ attraction _ might be the world’s greatest understatement.)

“Not now, Shaun,” and from anyone else, that would feel like shot to the heart, and it still  _ does _ , but it feels more like a shot to the heart that is immediately and tenderly healed, leaving just a bruise behind. 

“I know you want to live in the moment. I do too, trust me, I’ve never wanted it more, but...I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or even in the next hour.”

_ And what if you die, then? You’re going to leave me hurting no matter what, can’t you just give me this one thing to hold onto after you’re gone? _ Shaun thinks, but he doesn’t say it, he  _ can’t _ , he can’t hurt Desmond like that, because he understands Desmond’s reasoning and god knows Shaun would do the same thing in his place.

He’s a masochist, isn’t he? Reaching out, knowing he’s going to be in pain, looking to make it more so he can suffer properly, yeah? Isn’t that what Shaun is doing to himself?

“I’m not going to hurt you like that,” Desmond concludes, as if he knows exactly what Shaun is thinking, but then again, it must be clear as day in his expression.

He squeezes Shaun’s hand. 

“After,” he says, “if I make it out. I promise,” and Shaun looks at him odd, because he’s an idiot, really, and what the  _ hell _ is going on inside his head?

“You probably shouldn't be making promises you can’t keep, you know. Bit of a dangerous habit,” Shaun says, because they both know it by now - there won’t  _ be _ an after, not for Desmond.

And Desmond just squeezes his hand again, says “I’m used to it by now,” which is, well, it’s  _ true _ , and then tops it off with “I just hope it doesn’t hurt you too much.”

As soon as their hands are no longer touching, Shaun misses the contact. 

* * *

It happens soon enough - they run out of time, they have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The drive there, the sorrowful glances from the only biological family member he knows and the only people he can actually call family, the near-freezing fog seeping into every pore in his skin, it all blurs and melts away like raindrops on a window, lost to the adrenaline and something else. Part of Desmond wishes he had let Shaun tell him the entire truth, that  _ he _ had told the entire truth, but he thinks he would have left Shaun with more to lose had he done that. Then again, leaving Shaun in that sort of limbo as he did isn’t ideal, and he thinks he fucked it up.

He thinks he fucked a lot of things up, leaving everything the way he did. It’s not like he can go back and change it now, though, what he left behind, all the regrets he has, everything he did, everything he  _ didn’t _ do.

He left a mess behind. He had a second chance, he had so many second chances, and instead of cleaning his life up he just dug his grave deeper every time.

It’s all set in stone, and shouldn’t he know that? Desmond, of all people, who has lived out the memories of his ancestors, who has seen more than most people have or ever will just how much is unchangeable. He should know that all he can do is keep going now.

_ Now _ . 

He doesn’t know when  _ now _ is, because with his hand attached to the altar, enveloped in bright, searing light and heat, as if all the power contained in that solar flare is being funneled into his fragile mortal body, he sees it all. The past, everything, Altair, Ezio, Haytham, Connor. He sees Adam and Eve, Clay, he sees Minerva and Juno, and everything is tinted gold. Time is just another dimension, now, as easily perceived - as easily  _ bent _ \- as the three spatial dimensions. Even like this, though, his brain is only human, for the most part, and he can only take so much, so he only perceives it for what must be milliseconds. 

He feels billions of years in that instant.

The past few months are, simultaneously, a lifetime’s worth of memories and a split second of remembrance, a fleeting glimpse of recognition, a vague scent floating on the air, tectonic plates shifting. 

The Apple in his pocket resonates along with him. Desmond’s entire life is a mere drop in the ocean, really, nothing more than a single atom of hydrogen in the ever-expanding stretch of space, the smallest theoretical quasiparticle juxtaposed with Everything. 

His body is fragile, mortal. It cannot handle all this power.  _ He _ cannot handle all this power. The Apple cannot, either, but it can take some of the load from Desmond’s already-broken mind.  _ Is _ his mind broken? Or is it just bent? How much strain can it take before it loses the ability to snap back? 

He does not shatter. Instead, he burns up. He is searing hot, blinding light. He becomes fire, and then ash. Heat rises.  _ He _ rises. Desmond is locked onto the altar as all the power of the Sun engulfs him. He won’t remember all of it, not in the usual way humans remember things, but rather in flashes of light and the memory of acrid smoke of a scent he’s never encountered before or after. He’s prodded at something so, so very much larger than him. Not larger,  _ greater _ , that sums it up better, in magnitude, and in all its multitudes.

For a brief moment, a single breath - a single heart’s pulsation, even - there is calm. There is a lull. There is a  _ separation _ , and Desmond is no longer fused with the altar. 

His arm is free, light, floating, and it looks like it was dipped in tar, like molten gold is running through his veins, like Apple number six has become a part of him. He is thrown backwards by the force of a thousand suns exploding, lightning jolting his heart to a stop and restarting it in a flash, and -

And then he’s falling. 

And there’s nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for unreality and graphic depictions of burn injuries

It’s not white lights Desmond sees first. No, he’s had enough of that bullshit, bright lights at the end of the tunnel - or rather, at the start, since they were the last thing he saw before...well,  _ before. _ He doesn’t know what he missed, but it feels like he jumped straight from  _ before _ to  _ after _ , just cut out the middle and threw it away. He can’t see  _ shit _ now, feels like he’s half in and half out of his body, paralyzed by something beyond his control, can’t find any of his muscles to make them react. He isn’t sure how he’s alive ( _ is _ he alive?). Did one of the goddesses take pity on him, or was this destined to happen all along, or was it just a fluke not meant to occur? The Apple might have saved him, somehow, but he’s unclear on that bit. 

No, scratch that. He’s unclear on  _ everything _ . He almost feels like being clear on it would ruin the effect of miraculously escaping death. But the world is saved, and he’s not the sacrificial lamb he thought he would be, just the lab rat he’s been from the start.

He’s pretty sure he hallucinated a good deal of it, too, because there’s not a single trace of the Apple left when he, the sharp edge of consciousness digging into his skin, finally manages to form coherent thoughts. It isn’t that Desmond feels the Apple’s absence in his pocket, because most of the right side of his body seems to be unresponsive and he’s not coordinated enough to pay attention to any sensory input coming from the left. It’s more that he feels its absence on some subconscious, primitive level, realizes that there had been this constant electrical hum coming from it the whole time only because cutting it away has left his ears ringing.

He fades in and out, sees everything under a vignette of bloodred darkness, faces leaning over him, illuminated from the back, too blown out in the too-bright light for him to make out any of their features. When - for a brief while - he’s finally awake and cognizant and  _ not _ -in-pain enough to pay attention, his arm is just...charred. Like the entire outer layer of skin, and then some, has been baked to a crisp. He can’t feel anything, and he doesn’t know if it’s painkillers or shock or something else entirely, but the agony just beneath the surface of his mind, memories and present moment combined, is enough to make him just accept it. He tries to touch the burns, but someone pulls his hand away, and then holds it, and he isn’t counting the time but he swears they hold his hand for a  _ while _ , like they’re paying something back. He’s moving the whole time, on a gurney or something, the ground rocking beneath him as if he’s floating in the ocean.

Maybe he only dreamed that. Swimming one-armed through a soup of pain and drugs, thinking for a split second too long that he’s somehow gone past experiencing the memories of his ancestors and superimposed himself upon Malik, he awakens in a white room, glaring lights, window on one wall, and everything is sterile, he can practically  _ see _ the bloody sigils, he’s right back where he started - 

They don’t sedate him, somehow not just understanding but  _ listening  _ to his panicked, slurred insistence, but they do give him something for the anxiety. Desmond can’t shake the uneasy feeling of accepting medicine from someone in what looks like a hazmat suit, but something tells him he’s safe here, first his eagle vision and then the nurses themselves.

(Part of him is suspicious, as always. He comes up with a dedicated theory that starts and ends with his being kidnapped by the Templars again, but a mixture of lack of evidence and his own weariness keep him from following it in more than passing consideration.)

It turns out his arm  _ was _ , for lack of a better way to put it, baked to a crisp. Rolling up the sleeves of his hoodie meant there was nothing between the sheer power of the Temple and his skin, but it also meant he didn’t have to deal with the possibility of charred hoodie fabric being  _ fused _ with his skin. Although, lying in a hospital bed only half present, having already made it through the ER and the first stretch of intensive care, he wonders absentmindedly what happened to his hoodie. He’ll have to ask Shaun or Rebecca, when he sees them again.

_ Did they make it? _ he wonders. Of course they did, of course, he doesn’t know who he saw or if it was real, but he feels like he’d know if they were gone, same way he knows the Apple is gone now. Not lost, but gone. There’s nothing there anymore, no presence to be tracked, just a void where certainty used to be.

Whatever he left behind, there’s no going back. 

Shaun and Rebecca can’t visit him, he’s told, nor William. He can’t even be sent flowers, because his arm is so vulnerable to infection in this state. (He probably  _ did _ dream the hand-holding, then. He isn’t sure why that makes him sad.) 

At least that explains the sterile room.

* * *

The nurses tell him, two IVs and a round of shock drugs later, that most of them have never dealt with burns like this before, he’s lucky this hospital has such a good burn unit, and did he plunge his arm into a furnace or something like that? He leans back into the cool, welcoming embrace of the hospital bed and sighs, slurs his words when he says  _ Yeah, something like that _ , and hopes the others have come up with a good enough cover story that he won’t earn himself a psych eval. 

Third degree burns, they say, but actually, these are  _ fourth _ degree. Desmond hasn’t heard of that before, and he doesn’t like the sound of it, so he asks what it is.

He regrets it, even though he has to know. Damage to not just the skin, but the tendons, the muscles, even the bone. Fire all the way through his arm. He feels nothing because of the painkillers, but under that, nothing as well - the nerves are destroyed. He’s already had one emergency surgery, all the dead skin removed, and his arm has a temporary skin graft that will have to be replaced soon. That’s weird to him, the idea of what he’s always taken for granted as an integral part of his body being so replaceable, but he supposes it makes sense, given that skin cells die and regrow so fast anyways. 

Third degree burns have circumferential second degree burns, someone in pristine white scrubs with matching gloves and mask tells him, and those are the ones where the nerve endings are still intact. Those are the ones that hurt like hell (when the painkiller-shock cocktail wears off, it’s true, they  _ do _ hurt like hell). He doesn’t really know what that means in this context,  _ circumferential _ , even though he understands the definition of the word in a general kind of way, and he starts thinking, in his addled state of mind, about geometry. Sacred geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry. Those strange glyphs. The tattoos snaking up his left arm, sharp edges and curves, all black ink and bold elegance. The shapes carved into the Apple, and into his right arm, gold, and - where did that thought come from? He never had tattoos on his right arm. Maybe the Temple didn’t kill him, but drove him insane instead. 

He’s lucky his bones didn’t fuse more than they did, which isn’t much, but the bones in the hand are small and delicate - they show him an X-ray; he remembers Shaun complaining about how a similarly small defect in the wrist, carpal tunnel syndrome, causes all sorts of trouble. He’ll need a set of intensive surgeries spanning months. He’ll need a series of skin grafts - that’s going to be a nightmare. He’ll have scars for the rest of his life, and he’s okay with that, because he’s  _ alive _ and he’s  _ him _ , he’s  _ Desmond _ . 

But it still hurts.

They tell him he’ll probably never regain full motor control of his hand, and he knows the  _ probably _ isn’t necessary. There are implications behind this, ones he can’t talk about with these ordinary people, ones he doesn’t  _ want _ to talk about with the one Assassin he knows he’ll be talking to first - his father, of course.

He’ll deal with it later. 

* * *

Surgery again, to attempt to reinvigorate what’s left of damaged nerve endings, to unfuse some bones and shift others, to repair his flesh. State-of-the-art technology. There’s an Apple, somewhere out there, that could heal him. Maybe the one that disappeared when he danced on the line between life and death. Had he died, there’s probably some other Isu artifact that could have revived him. But for now, he’s just human, high concentration of Isu genes aside. He’s not special. 

Three days later, after the second surgery, after the first skin graft heals, a nurse replaces his bandages and pages someone else, eyes wide with surprise, and the two of them in their clean, stark scrubs whisper to each other. Desmond stares at the ceiling. It’s white, pristine, and boring. Part of him wishes this place were decorated with bright colors, soft lights, like the pediatric wing would be. It’s not just kids who need that kind of comfort. They tell him he’s healing quickly, after the surgery. It’s a surprise. He’ll still need another surgery for the skin graft. Still scars, for sure, and he’ll need physical therapy once he can move without hurting himself, but his body is doing its job very, very well.

After the next skin graft, they tell him the same thing again - his body is taking to it fantastically well, must be something in his genetics, he’s too tired to really absorb all of it.

Again, he’s okay with that.

His white blood cell count is elevated, someone tells him. Maybe multiple times, too, or maybe it just sticks because he heard it in a dream. Dream, memory, present, he can’t distinguish anymore. He imagines it, high contrast against the hazy white ceiling of his hospital room, a blurry red sea teeming with white discs, almost like off-color checkers. 

He sleeps a lot, because it’s good for his recovery, and he’s so unbelievably tired of everything anyways. And he thinks about how much he just wants to see Shaun and Rebecca, to hug them. He thinks about how tired he is of waiting for the right moment, not knowing if it’ll ever come, not knowing when or even if the hell would ever end. He thinks about the fact that he might have made it past the hard part, maybe, just maybe - he might be able to rest without the permanence of death. 

He thinks about what Shaun said to him, about how he fucked up but maybe he promised hard enough that it seeped into the very fabric of the universe and changed his fate. That’s probably not what happened, but he can fantasize.

Desmond’s memories are a quilted tapestry, mismatched pieces of his ancestors and himself, and every once in a while, in between sleep and drugs and drug-induced sleep. His skin is the same, grafts replaced every few days while the wound heals, and he’s finally allowed, after the doctors decide he doesn’t need to be quarantined anymore, to walk around the hospital halls and courtyard, albeit with his IV cart wheeled along with him and a nurse at his side. 

Someone tried to send him flowers. The apologetic nurse tells him the person in question hung up the phone before they could catch a name, after being told nothing could be sent in while he was quarantined in the sterile room. He wonders who it was. He wonders if they’ll try to send him anything else. He hasn’t seen a human face save for that of the many, many medical personnel he’s interacted with in the last...week? Two weeks? It’s 2013, according to the calendar on one wall of his new hospital room (no TV, but at least it’s not shared with someone else), but nobody has been crossing off the individual days on the calendar, the daily agenda whiteboard thing they gave him is currently hidden by some plastic bag, and he hasn’t bothered to ask someone to move it. He’s starting to go just a little stir-crazy, but most of the time he’s just happy to be there, to be in relatively stable condition, to be healing as well as he can be, and that his visitor clearance has been upped from medical personnel only to immediate family.

It’s better than nothing, even if his father is the last person he wants to see right now. He’s used to  _ better than nothing _ , so he tolerates it, and he only complains a little bit, and he makes sure to put on a smile when he can muster it (even if he wishes it could be for one of his friends.)

Sure, it’s nice that they let William visit him - God knows the man hasn’t left the damn hospital once, constantly asking questions, constantly trailing, constantly keeping an eye on Desmond from a distance and barely talking to him, as if he expects him to spontaneously combust or something - but Desmond misses the people that he can actually call friends. 

It’s complicated. 

That’s really all Desmond can think to say about it, because it’s the truth. Part of him wants to regret everything he did, running away and then getting caught, thinking he could escape only to get dragged back into the very thing he tried to avoid in the first place, but most of him is proud he made a stand against what he’d been told was his destiny, because he thinks otherwise he wouldn’t have known how to do the same when it came down to... _ this _ . 

And part of him wants to forgive William, wants to forgive his father - if he can even call the man that, it feels foreign on his tongue in a way that even the languages of his ancestors never have - but he also wants to hold onto the feelings he’s been carrying with him for as long as he can remember. 

Rage. Not really the hot, fast-burning kind anymore, but the cool kind, the kind that settles in between his ribs and manifests itself in the constant clench of his jaw, the subconscious narrowing of his brows, the way he’s always on edge. The way he can’t stop replaying William hitting him, and he should be  _ over _ it, he should be over  _ everything _ , but it’s like that one thing opened the floodgates and now everything is coming back.

Nothing makes sense, and distractions are few and far between, and he’s still in pain most of the time, so Desmond just sleeps to avoid dwelling on it. He sleeps, and he heals, and every day he gets a little better, but he still feels like he’s stagnating, or maybe even walking backwards.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! i know i haven't updated in a hot second, but i swear i haven't abandoned this, i've just been busy :') as of posting this i have most of ch4 done and a very solid idea of what's coming next. also, i swear desmond and shaun are going to interact soon, i _know_ this is tagged as slow burn but it's not like...crock pot overnight beef stew levels of slow burn. more of a steamed dumplings moment. ~~it's almost 2am~~
> 
> posting as i write is kind of new and scary to me, because i tend to get picky about checking for continuity after i finish writing something. i'll most likely do some minor retconning at some point anyways, though. 
> 
> have fun watching shaun go through all 5 stages of grief in as many minutes : )

Shaun bought flowers. He bought bloody  _ flowers _ , and for what? For nothing but to be told he can’t visit, and he can’t even send in a gift because the risk of infection is too high.

Logically, it makes sense, and he accepts the ultimatum with a nod and his head held high. If there’s anything he’s learned from the last few months, though, it’s that relying on logic alone isn’t something he wants to do anymore. So he sits in the shitty rental car (it’s not even  _ his _ ) Rebecca has procured for them, and he leaves the bouquet (sunflowers, zinnias, and some other things he doesn’t remember the name of) in the passenger seat, crumpled wrapper and all, and he cries. 

He remembers the last time he cried, because that’s not something he really does. He’s not proud of it by any means, but he knows he’s numb to most things by now. After Clay died, he hiked out into the middle of nowhere and sobbed his fucking eyes out before replacing all his lost hydration with whiskey. This time, he  _ doesn’t _ go for the whiskey, and this time, he somehow managed to keep it all bottled up for as long as possible (right up to the new year) but the rest of the situation is pretty similar. 

What did he say? What did he  _ fucking _ say? That he wasn’t going to get attached, wasn’t going to go through any of that mess again, and he’s already been over this. It’s just all coming down upon Shaun, all at once, and it’s too much to handle - that last conversation he had with Desmond, the fact that the moron is still somehow  _ alive _ , the fact that Shaun went and psyched himself up to buy  _ flowers _ and they’re just going to rot in this car, the fact that he doesn’t know when he’ll get to talk to Desmond again. The fact that every bone in his body aches to be close to Desmond, to share space with him again, to even see his face, as if that will make his beyond improbable survival any less mind-boggling. The fact that Shaun knows his motivations are selfish, and he feels bad about it, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t stop thinking about the way Desmond held his hand and smiled at him.

The steering wheel of the car, and god knows what germs are lingering on it, press roughly against his forehead, and his glasses are tilted uncomfortably sideways, probably about to fall off his face -  _ oh _ , he startles, and there they go, and he smashes his cheek painfully into the wheel as he instinctively fumbles. That gets him to learn back, finally, and sigh, and grumble at the new indentation in his forehead from the wheel as he rubs half-dried tears out of his eyes. 

Shaun has had these same glasses the whole time. Probably needs to get his prescription updated, is  _ definitely _ a few years behind on eye exams, and the lenses are scuffed and scratched beyond belief even with his consistent use of the microfiber cloth that always resides somewhere in his pockets. It’s a miracle they’re still functional. It’s a miracle  _ he’s _ still functional, and he certainly wasn’t the one to take the worst of this fallout, not by a long shot.

“ _ Fuck,” _ Shaun hisses, his grief morphing into anger in a way that grabs him too quickly to repress it, and he pulls himself back together just in time to avoid slamming his fist into the steering wheel. He punches it, weakly, really just sort of half-heartedly slaps it, and jolts when he accidentally sets off the horn for a moment. Outside the car, outside of the parking lot it’s in, crossing the street to the hospital, a startled passerby glances back at him for a second, and he sinks even further into the seat.

He just wants to be there. The  _ one _ time his body doesn’t spur him to run as far away as he can, and he’s locked out.

The thought creeps over him like a little spider crawling up his arm, so slight he doesn’t notice its approach until it is close enough to directly regard. He  _ could _ run. From what,  _ to _ what, he isn’t sure, but he could get away from all of this. No way in hell would he run to the Templars, or even Abstergo, but he could hide if he tried hard enough. He could do what Desmond tried, years ago, slip away and never be found again. 

No. 

It’s foolish, impulsive, irresponsible. He rolls down the window and shakes the thought away with a deep breath in the frigid, still air. Images flash through his mind, simple words recalling what could have been.  _ Frigid, still _ . Unmoving. Cold. Corpselike. 

He’s going to need so much therapy when this blows over - he needs it now, for sure, but there’s not a chance William will let him get away with that, not when he still has so much work to do. So much for running away. William hasn’t even told him what he needs to do, mind you, and he’s itching for a task, something,  _ anything _ to distract him, but oh, they’re waiting on a consensus from someone or other, and Desmond is still in critical condition, and Rebecca is neck deep in covering up their admittedly very messy tracks, and here Shaun is. Here he is, alright. Sitting in a shitty rental car in Bumfuck, Nowhere, with his shitty supermarket bouquet, lost in his shitty thoughts. 

He stops. Looks over at the flowers, already a bit crushed. He wonders if stowing them in the trunk with all Rebecca’s leftover gear and the long-since looted first aid kits will help him feel better, because he can’t quite bring himself to just throw them away, but he also knows he can’t stand to look at them a moment longer. 

Shaun laughs a bit, to himself, and knows he must look half mad to anyone walking by, but he can’t be arsed to care at this point. They don’t know his life. They don’t know his thoughts. This is between him and that special sort of hell the last few months have been. 

He’s out of the car, cold biting through his layered clothes (he should have remembered how cold the Northeast is, but he’s had other things occupying his thoughts as of late), bouquet in hand. Stupid wilted sunflowers, stupid crumpled paper, stupid plastic film reminding him that these were probably grown in a lab, genetically modified to be as bright and vibrant as possible, but the whole thing just feels unnatural. But really, who bloody knows? He can recite botanical definitions verbatim, he knows far more than any reasonable person should about historical plants that have long since gone extinct, and snippets of the language of flowers are a permanent fixture in his pesky memory, but all he knows about genetics is from his A-levels and too many deep dives into Abstergo databases. 

He’s a historian. 

He’s just a  _ man _ . 

Somehow that has to do with so much more than just the flowers.

The flowers are starting to crunch in a particularly unappealing manner, yielding to both the cold and his white-knuckled grip, and his fingers are somehow both sore and numb as he peels them away from the bouquet, pops open the trunk, and - 

And he falters, barely managing to stop himself from dropping the flowers to the salt-dusted, cold-cracked asphalt. 

When did Desmond’s hoodie wind up in the trunk?

The flowers are discarded, put to the side, and he’s picking it up, bunching it up in his arms, and before he can tell himself it’s a bad idea and he’s embarrassing himself, he’s pressing it to his face and inhaling, some deep part of him wondering if it’ll make him feel closer to Desmond - if it’ll be the same as that time Desmond draped it over his shoulders while he slept. There’s no one to watch him but strangers, anyways, so what does it matter? 

A chill comes over Shaun, grabs him and shakes him. Maybe it’s just the cold. The hoodie smells nearly the same, and he doesn’t know how he even remembers it, but then again his brain tends to be like that. Remember something oddly specific, lose hours or even days; remember the full name of someone he’s met once, forget everything he ever learned in high school maths.

There’s something different, though, a burnt smell to it, and he turns it over to find that one sleeve is still rolled up. The other…Shaun sucks in a breath, pushes his glasses up on his nose, tries not to grimace. The other is almost completely burned off up to the elbow, and badly singed the rest of the way up. The scent of soot lingers on the entire garment, and...well, that’s no good. Shaun has his laptop in the car, doesn’t he? No, even better, he has the brand new cell phone Rebecca procured for him. 

Desmond’s hoodie takes the place of the flowers in the passenger seat as Shaun gets back in the car with a strong new conviction. He finds the phone in the glove compartment, turns on the heater, and begins to make a Google search. He can do better than flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! 
> 
> as always, i am on [twitter](https://twitter.com/aceofcorvids), mostly shitposting and rambling about resident evil these days. pillowfort is out of commission for the foreseeable future, so most of my art gets posted on twitter as well. 
> 
> thoughts? predictions? keysmashes? _constructive _criticism? leave a comment, it makes my day <3__


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